It’s surprising that this tip should fall under that category of YouTube secrets. Yet, the majority of small business owners who post videos on YouTube fail to take this simple step that can increase the flow of traffic from their YouTube videos to their websites.
When you post a video to YouTube, you have the opportunity to add a description to your video. A snippet of this description will be displayed to the right of your video on YouTube as well as in the video search results on the site. Most people do take the time to enter some sort of description in this box. (As a side note, make sure you write a compelling, keyword rich description of your video. This helps your video’s ranking in the search results).
But, here’s the little secret that many small business owners miss:
You can insert active links to your web site, or pages within your website, in this description. And the best part is that you don’t have to know any HTML code to do it!
Simply enter the URL you want to include, starting with “http://” and YouTube will automatically turn that into an active link when your video is posted.
A few recommendations I have on this YouTube secret:
1. Put two links in your description. Make one the very first thing people see in the description so they’re sure to see it when watching your video on YouTube. Then put one more as the very last thing included in your description. You may even want to add a call to action with this second link along the lines of “For much more on this topic, visit http://OurFreakingAwesomeWebsite.com”.
2. If possible, send people to a page on your website that has your keyword in the URL. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “dog training” send people to “http://www.SeeSpotRun.com/dogtraining.html.” Any time you can get your keyword in the description, it will help with your video’s ranking in the search engine.
Web surfers are lazy. Anything you can do to make it easier for them to get to your website, the better off you are. So don’t make people have to take the effort to remember the URL you mention in your video and type it into their browser. Simply put clickable links to your website in your YouTube video descriptions that will get them to your site with almost no effort at all (on your part or theirs!).
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Great advice Adam, well done! I think the call to action part is important. The one point that had not occurred to me is to link to a page with the same keyword, instead of just the home page.
Your article was very helpful. Glad I have you set up in my feed.
I think youtube is a great tool for anyone interested in watching or uploading videos. I have been using the site for years now, and still think it is doing a good job. Ok, so sometimes it gets criticized for being too easy to break copyright laws, but youtube’s online security is getting better. The best thing about the site is its great video search engine and database. No wonder it made it as the top sharing site on http://www.dozenvideo.com this month. But there’s some tough competition out there and as online video gets bigger and bigger, there’s sure to be a backlash. Keep online videos free and easy to share!
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